Michigan Bell Building and National Theater in Detroit are in for changes

Oct. 19, 2013

The National Theater stands on Monroe Street in the middle of the rapidly redeveloping central downtown, and businessman Dan Gilbert hopes to obtain the site to build his growing network. / Regina H. Boone/Detroit Free Press

Two historic structures in Detroit are in for big changes, one clearly positive, the other more uncertain.

Start with the positive. The old Michigan Bell Building (better know as the Yellow Pages Building) on Oakman Boulevard near the Lodge has been remade in a $52-million renovation as the new home for the nonprofit Neighborhood Service Organization.NSO works with the recently homeless to provide decent housing and an array of services, from drug counseling to recreation.

A ribbon cutting Wednesday will celebrate the progress on the 255,000 square-foot structure. Joe Heaphy, NSO’s manager for the project, says residents have moved over the past year into the center’s 155 apartments, while NSO’s office headquarters only recently opened there. Wednesday’s event is meant to celebrate past progress and renovation yet to come.

The project rescues a landmark building that had stood empty for years. Along with the Focus:Hope facilities nearby, this section of northwest Detroit is now solidifying as a locale for delivering human services. “What we’re developing here is a nonprofit campus with Focus:Hope anchoring one side and us anchoring the other,” Heaphy said.

The historic structure facing a more uncertain future is the National Theater, built in 1911 from a design by architect Albert Kahn and his design associate Ernest Wilby. The National is one of those quirky designs from another era, with twin towers framing a deeply recessed arched entrance and colorful Pewabic tile adding to the flavor.

The theater has stood empty for decades, a fact which by itself wouldn’t necessarily doom it. But it stands on Monroe Street smack in the middle of the rapidly redeveloping central downtown, and businessman Dan Gilbert hopes to obtain the site to build another piece of his growing network.

That piece probably will rise as a residential building, said Jim Ketai, managing partner of Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Services. Right now the ownership of the site is caught between a private developer and the City of Detroit. If that clears up, Gilbert hopes to obtain title.

Ketai said he likes the exotic design of the National Theater and would like to keep at least some of the structure to incorporate it into something new. That may mean just saving the facade as an entrance to either a retail or residential structure to rise behind it.

Downtown is redeveloping so swiftly and the need for new housing and retail is so great that any historic structure that isn’t in use faces an uncertain future. The trick will be to preserve as much of Detroit’s architectural heritage as possible while filling the needs of the present and future. Often those two goals meet as one; many of our best “new” buildings downtown — the Broderick Tower, the Westin Book Cadillac — are adaptive reuses of historic structures.

At the old Yellow Pages Building, a redevelopment project accomplished that twin task in first-rate fashion. At the National Theater downtown, it remains to be seen.